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Congressional Budget Office
A Presentation to the 36th Annual Economic Policy Conference
National Association for Business Economics
February 24, 2020
Phillip L. Swagel, Director
The 2020 Budget and Economic Outlook
For more details, see www.cbo.gov/publication/56020.

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The Economy

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We expect the unemployment rate to remain near historic lows
throughout 2020

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Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, “Wage Growth Tracker” (accessed February 11, 2020), www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker.
Gains in hourly wages have been especially strong for low-wage
earners since late 2016

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GDP = gross domestic product.
GDP is projected to grow by 2.2 percent in 2020

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Maximum sustainable output growth is projected to be faster than
it was from 2008 to 2019 and slower than it was in earlier years

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CBO
PCE = personal consumption expenditures.
We expect strong labor and product markets to contribute to faster
inflation in 2020

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CBO
In our projections, the Federal Reserve begins raising the target
range for the federal funds rate to ease inflationary pressures

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We expect other interest rates to rise, following a path similar to
that of the federal funds rate

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The Budget

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When October 1 (the first day of the fiscal year) falls on a weekend, certain payments that would have ordinarily been made on that day are instead made at the end of September and
thus are shifted into the previous fiscal year. All projections presented here have been adjusted to exclude the effects of those timing shifts.
We project a cumulative federal budget deficit of $12.4 trillion from
2020 to 2029

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CBO
When October 1 (the first day of the fiscal year) falls on a weekend, certain payments that would have ordinarily been made on that day are instead made at the end of September and
thus are shifted into the previous fiscal year. All projections presented here have been adjusted to exclude the effects of those timing shifts.
The gap between spending and revenues grows in our projections

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CBO
* = between zero and 0.05 percentage points.
Total revenues as a share of GDP are projected to rise, largely
because of increasing receipts from individual income taxes

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CBO
Much of the growth of revenues in our projections stems from the
expiration of tax provisions

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See Congressional Budget Office, “Recent Changes in CBO’s Projections of Corporate Income Tax Revenues,” CBO Blog (February 7, 2020), www.cbo.gov/publication/56121.
The largest of those revisions are related to:
 Certain provisions of the 2017 tax act related to international
business activities
 A onetime tax that the act imposed on the existing foreign
earnings of U.S. corporations
 A rule in the act about research and experimentation
expenditures
 New information about corporate profits during the 2016–2018
period
Since last August, we have reduced our projections of corporate
income tax receipts during the 2020–2029 period by $127 billion

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CBO
Increases in projected outlays stem from growth in mandatory
spending and in net interest costs

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a. Consists of outlays for Medicare (net of premiums and other offsetting receipts), Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, premium tax credits, and related spending.
Social Security and Medicare are projected to contribute the most
to growth in mandatory spending

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When October 1 (the first day of the fiscal year) falls on a weekend, certain payments that would have ordinarily been made on that day are instead made at the end of September and
thus are shifted into the previous fiscal year. That happened in 1994 and 1995, so values for 1995 have been adjusted to exclude the effects of those timing shifts.
Spending and taxes in 2030 are projected to be very different
from what they were 50 years ago

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By 2050, debt is projected to equal 180 percent of GDP—far higher
than it has ever been

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See www.cbo.gov/about/products/budget-economic-data.
We post our projections and other data on our website